


Thermodynamics

by sunveined (SlimeQueen)



Series: Wonderland [3]
Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Can be read standalone, M/M, Metaphors, Recreational Drug Use, mafia!au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-15
Updated: 2017-08-15
Packaged: 2018-12-15 19:18:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11812512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SlimeQueen/pseuds/sunveined
Summary: Lu Han feels calm in a way he hasn’t in a long time when he's with Minseok.





	Thermodynamics

**Author's Note:**

> uhhhh all i gotta say is that i want a dragon tattoo now  
> Please don't steal or post my work anywhere else without my permission! Thank you!

Lu Han first meets Minseok in an opium den in Beijing, and he’s instantly smitten.

Minseok looks different than everyone else in the room. He’s cleaner, somehow, in his crisp blazer and dark jeans. His eyes are alert and intelligent, foxlike in appearance. Years of the business have taught Lu Han how to understand a person by just looking, and Minseok looks impenetrable.

His slanted, wide eyes settle on Lu Han and narrow, and he knows at once that he’s being examined right back. He knows what Minseok will see. A pretty face and big doe eyes framed by long lashes. Tiny scars under his eye and on his lip, if his gaze is as inquisitive as it looks.

Minseok takes a long, calculated drag from the cigarette in his hand, and blows the smoke in a long languid strand into the already hazy room. There’s no opium lamp or pipe near him, Lu Han realizes with a start. He’s smarter than he’d anticipated.

“I take it you’re Zhou Mi’s men, then.” he says in a quiet, dry voice, and Lu Han’s throat is so tight all he can do is nod.

Yifan nudges him in the side hard enough that it hurts, and it jars Lu Han enough that he gets his voice back. “You’re younger than I expected.”

The glare Yifan sends his way makes his skin prickle even if he can’t see it. “What my partner meant to say is, we look forward to doing business with you.”

Minseok’s lips curl into a sly smile, but the look in his eyes is not unkind when he holds a hand out for Lu Han to shake. “The pleasure’s all mine,” he says, and tightens his grip on Lu Han’s hand just enough that he knows it’s purposeful.

Of all of Zhou Mi’s colleagues he’s met, Kim Minseok is the youngest, smallest, and somehow, the most dangerous.

* * *

 That night, when the business details have been put to the side, Minseok tries out the product to see if it’s worth the investment. He rubs a little into his gums, and after a second, raises an eyebrow.

“You’re good,” he says with mild surprise. He’s talking about the cocaine but his dark eyes are staring right at Lu Han while he says it.

“Good enough for you to have a line?” Yifan’s lounged on his armchair like he owns it, long legs crossed, voice cool and convincing. He’s always been better at dealing with business than Lu Han.

“I don’t waste product.” Minseok smiles, and it feels like a knife in Lu Han’s side.

When he’s leaving the den with a bag of product, he drops a little slip of paper into Lu Han’s lap.

There’s an address scrawled on it, along with a room number.

* * *

 Lu Han hates and loves Beijing.

He loves his childhood, the parts of the city he’d lived in before getting mixed up in what his mother would call _the wrong crowd_. He loves when the city comes alive at dawn, millions of people rising with the sun and filling the streets.

The parts he hates- that’s more complicated. As he makes his way across the streets to the address Minseok had sent him, he sees the things that are invisible to everyone else.

On the corner of the street, a man leaning against a lamp post. He’s dealing coke, most likely, or heroin. In front of a parking garage, a heavily made-up prostitute waits for her next client. These are Lu Han’s people, and what he hates is not them- no, everyone has their reasons for where they are. What he hates is that he looks where normal people only see other people, and he sees them for what they really are.

Beijing is claustrophobic sometimes. There’s never any peace or silence in a place like this. Only grime and grit and dirt and blood, under his nails, under his skin.

Sometimes Lu Han thinks he’s decomposing alive.

The hotel is discreet, with simple but elegant rooms and a view of the Beijing skyline. Minseok lets him in with a cool smile and offers him a drink, which he refuses.

“Smart,” Minseok comments, and takes a sip from his own wine glass. “but it would be a shame if you didn’t at least try this with me.” He gestures with a hand towards the table, and Lu Han sees two neat lines of coke waiting.

“I thought you didn’t waste the product.”

The corner of his mouth curls into a smirk and he leans back on his heels. Lu Han’s a good deal taller than him but the way Minseok stands is confident, his shoulders straight, chin held high- like he knows Lu Han’s place is under his feet.

“It’s not a waste if I get something in return.” Minseok steps forward into the light from the window and his face is lit up by the fluorescent lights of the city outside, in motion even in the middle of the night.  

Lu Han feels something curl in his stomach, and he steps forward.

* * *

Sometimes coke makes Lu Han hyper.

Sometimes he wants to bounce off the walls and scream and dance and run.

Other times, it makes him feel like Beijing is the most claustrophobic place in the world and all he wants is to be anywhere else.

Today, he feels numb. Minseok’s hot mouth finds his and he very nearly can’t bring himself to kiss back. Once they’ve started though, he can’t stop.

Minseok is quiet in a way that’s comfortable, and Lu Han’s never liked excessive talking when he’s trying to get his dick wet anyways, so it works. It’s a fumble to get their clothes off, and under his neat clothing, Minseok’s body is all hard lines that open up under Lu Han’s hands.

He’s been cold for so long he’d nearly forgotten what another body feels like under him, and when Minseok’s warm, thick thighs wrap around his waist and pull him closer, their cocks rubbing together wetly, Lu Han flinches.

Minseok’s clever fingers spend their time exploring Lu Han’s body, and when they find the red dragon curling across the back of his shoulder and down his back, Minseok makes a surprised noise.

“This must have been painful.” His voice is quiet, breath tickling Lu Han’s shoulder blade.

Lu Han remembers gritting his teeth against the pain of the needle, of the multiple trips to the dirty little tattoo shop it had taken. There had been a young boy with big eyes watching studiously as the woman had inked his tattoo. The boy had held Lu Han’s hand when he’d cried out in pain.

Minseok’s warm fingertips trace the great maw of the beast, the sharp fangs, the detailed scales. Then he traces them with his tongue, and Lu Han quivers under the feeling, fingers clenched tightly in his lap.

It’s been so long since he’s last done this. He doesn’t know what to do with his hands while Minseok stretches himself out, dark intelligent eyes unwavering on Lu Han’s.

Minseok beckons him forward, and like he’s bewitched, Lu Han moves forward.

Minseok guides his dick in, and he’s so warm, velvety heat clamped tight around Lu Han’s cock.  And they’re moving in a rushed tandem, and all Lu Han can feel is _good_ , high on the feeling and high on the coke and high on Minseok.

He’s quiet during sex, and that makes Lu Han all the more eager to drink up any little sound that he lets slip, whether it be a tiny gasp or a soft moan muffled into the crook of his arm. The rapid rise and fall of his chest, though, gives away how close he is to breaking when Lu Han hikes his leg up over his shoulder and fucks into him harder.

Minseok makes a muffled noise when he comes, biting down on the heel of his palm to keep himself quiet, and Lu Han follows soon after, out of practice and barely in control of his body.

Afterwards, when Minseok cleans up quickly and efficiently and joins him back in bed, Lu Han listens to the noises of the city. He feels calm in a way he hasn’t in a long time. Minseok curls up into his side, carefully presses his fingers to Lu Han’s hollow ribcage.

“You’re cold,” Minseok says quietly, and Lu Han answers, “You’re warm.”

* * *

 Minseok is gone by the time he wakes up, gone back to Seoul, to a life Lu Han knows nothing about. All he has to remember him is the fading scent of him on the cold sheets.

Lu Han gets up, calls Yifan, and tells him to pick him up.

* * *

 Lu Han sees Minseok again in Seoul the next year. Zhou Mi had sent him to check up on Yixing, the one who he’d sent to build bridges with their Korean correspondents.

Lu Han’s only been to Korea once before, and it’s so different from the dirty crowded streets of Beijing that he takes a minute to just take in the lights of the city before he’s whisked away to the outskirts, where the shops become smaller and more dilapidated.

In a neighborhood where most of the street lamps are dark, Lu Han spots the same things he sees at home. Here, a kid who looks barely fifteen, his eye blackened from a particularly hard hit. There, a woman shivering on the curb, seeking potential customers.

Lu Han doesn’t know why he’d expected Korea to be any different. His eyes have gotten accustomed to seeing these things anywhere in the world.

* * *

 Minseok looks like a king perched on his throne in his dark shop.

It’s interesting, to say the least. Lu Han’s mostly used to selling in the street and at clubs, where pulsing, glowing, bodies take over. Stepping into Wonderland is like stepping into another planet. Everything distorts, and amongst the chaos, Minseok reigns with ease.

His partner is even younger than him, and Lu Han doesn’t trust the sly curve of his lips. Yixing, on the other hand, greets Jongdae with a warm familiar smile, and Lu Han has to wonder what exactly Yixing gets up to here in Korea when no one’s here to watch him.

Minseok greets him with a cool handshake and a quirk of the lips that makes Lu Han think that he remembers details of their last encounter perfectly.

They discuss business in the curious back room of the shop, a delicate music box melody carrying their conversation. Mostly, Minseok stares at Lu Han with an unfathomable expression on his face and answers all the questions they have.

Once business is out of the way, the tightness in Yixing’s shoulders loosens and he whips out a joint. They pass it back and forth, and when Lu Han feels too asleep and too awake all at once, Minseok brushes his fingers along the back of his neck, startlingly warm.

This time, when Minseok invites him over, it’s a hot whisper in the shell of his ear.

* * *

 Minseok’s mouth tastes sweet when he pushes Lu Han down against the sheets and kisses him insistently.

He’s as warm as Lu Han remembers, soft in all the right places. Lu Han wants to dig his fingers in and never let go.

This time, Minseok braces a hot palm on Lu Han’s sternum and rides him languidly. Lu Han comes first, arching up off the bed as Minseok scratches his blunt nails down his abdomen.

Minseok had looked like a king in his shop, and he looks like one now, seated on Lu Han’s hips.

* * *

 Lu Han stays in Seoul for two months, and he doesn’t even once use the hotel room Zhou Mi had set up for him.

* * *

 “I hate winters here.” Minseok whispers the words into Lu Han’s collarbone.

They’re in Shanghai for the weekend, Minseok on business, Lu Han because Minseok had texted the second he’d landed in China.

“Isn’t it colder in Korea?” Lu Han muses aloud. They’re holed up in a cheap motel off the red-light district, the heater cranked up all the way.

“Seoul is…different.” Minseok mumbles. “It’s cold here all the time. Maybe not the weather, but you know what I mean.”

Lu Han does know what he means. Minseok’s business brings him to the coldest places, full of grim weary faces and greedy hands. Somehow, his shop back in Seoul had not been that- it had been warm, somehow, like him. Lu Han had found himself as drawn to the hazy purple lighting as he is to Minseok.

“You’re warm, though.” Lu Han reminds him gently. As if to demonstrate, Lu Han presses his hand to Minseok’s bare stomach. He gets softer around the edges over the winter, and Lu Han likes how soft his skin feels against the pads of his fingers.

“And you’re as cold as this city.” The look in his eyes is fond, even if the words are not.

Lu Han thinks about that.

“Sometimes I wish I could thaw.” He whispers.

* * *

 Spring comes and Lu Han turns a year older.

Zhou Mi tells him with a heavy heart that Yixing has decided to leave them.

For a second, Lu Han has a terrible thought. Zhou Mi will ask him to hunt Yixing down, to shoot him through the chest as punishment for leaving.

But Zhou Mi looks up at him with wise eyes and quirks his lip knowingly. “There’s something about those Koreans, isn’t there?”

Lu Han presses his lips together. “I don’t know.” He forces himself to say monotonously.

Yifan, on the other hand, is sprawled in his chair, lazily smoking a cigarette. “There is.” He agrees easily.

Zhou Mi sends them both to Seoul for another business dealing.

Yifan tells him a week in that he does not want to return.

Minseok shrugs when Lu Han tells him and smiles charmingly. “I guess there’s just something about Wonderland.” Then he pulls Lu Han closer, presses their mouths together, and the conversation is over.

Lu Han returns to Beijing alone. 

* * *

 The next summer, in Beijing, Lu Han is sticky with sweat and sticky with blood.

He hates having to clean drying blood out from under his fingernails. He grimaces as the water in the sink runs rusty red.

Minseok is in China for a few days to check up with Zhou Mi on something, and he’s currently standing in the doorway to Lu Han’s tiny bathroom. His expression is neutral but his face is pallid.

Lu Han hasn’t been squeamish around gore for a long time, so he continues calmly cleaning blood and guts from his arms. Zhou Mi’s been in hot water underground lately, and Lu Han’s had to fight three people within the last week.

Minseok cautiously moves forward, reaches a hand out, and presses it to his bare back. Lu Han quivers under his touch, a ripple of something warm shooting down his spine.

“Have you ever thought about it?” Minseok murmurs as he winds his arms around Lu Han.

“Thought about what?” The water’s beginning to clear now.

“Leaving Zhou Mi.” Minseok says the words with no emotion, but Lu Han still feels like he’s been slapped.

All he’s known for so long is Zhou Mi, who took him in when no one else would. With Zhou Mi, he has the loyalty that comes with relying on each other in hundreds of dangerous situations.  

“I- I don’t-“ He stutters over the words. The possibility of one day leaving his position has never even occurred to him.

But Minseok. Minseok makes Lu Han _feel_ again, and after being empty, it’s almost unbearable but it’s also wonderful and Lu Han doesn’t have words for what he feels for Minseok yet. He’s been hazy for a long time, and Minseok is like the sun breaking through a smoggy grey sky.

Minseok presses against Lu Han’s back, his cheek to the swirling inked dragon that cascades down his back. “Just.” He pauses to take a deep breath, one that Lu Han feels against his back. “Just think about it.”

Lu Han watches the last of the water swirl down the drain and says nothing.

* * *

Beijing is unforgiving, Lu Han thinks. It’s the kind of city where you cannot go back, even if the future is not where you want to end up. Lu Han sits on the roof of his apartment building and watches the skyline disappear into the smog. He smokes a cigarette and adds to the pollution. The next time Lu Han comes to Seoul, it’s not with his usual luggage.

It’s with nothing except a heart full of hope and a mind full of Minseok.

**Author's Note:**

> [my tumblr](http://eatjinsass.tumblr.com) or [twitter](https://twitter.com/whinytaeyong) come hmu


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